How to entertain your chickens!!

Volcanoes

Volcanoes is a game aimed at helping you to enjoy the dust bath experience with your chickens. So put up and shut up, the alternative is not worth the aggravation.

Aim of the game

To have a mess for 1 meter around the circumference of a dust bathing site, where nothing can grow for many years, not too dissimilar to the ash fallout area from an erupting volcano

Equipment

  • A dry patch of soil
  • One or more chickens

Rules

  1. Any location can be legitimately used for a dust bathing hole
  2. For full volcanic effect your soil needs to be light, crumbly and slightly sandy, clay soil is not as effective.
  3. Once the dust bathing site has been identified the hole must not be filled in under any circumstances. An unhappy chicken lays no eggs!
  4. Any number of chickens may join in at any time.
  5. A site can be abandoned at any time but may be reoccupied whenever the time is right. If you fill it with fresh soil you will get the evil cluck and much re-excavation

How to play

  • Allow your chickens freedom to roam around your garden and identify a suitable site. This is likely to be in a sheltered but sunny spot, in the middle of a nicely dug patch of ground where you might want to plant something. Alternatively it will be on the edge of a flower bed next to the lawn or under a bush where the roots need excavating.
  • Wait patiently for the flock to work at their preferred dust hole until at least 20cm of soil has been eroded. This may take a number of visits. At some unknown secret signal your chickens will start to dust bath following the normal routine however instead of just getting themselves in a disgusting mess they flap their wings and flick soil, stones, plants and bulbs in an even distribution for anything up to a meter in any direction. On any particularly dry day there will be a cloud of dust up to a meter high above the dust bath hole and your chicken will be in full eruption making a funny furry purring noise, not to dissimilar to a cat, she will be very happy. This is your reward!

Winner;

The winner is always the chickens. The game never ends.
 

Booking.com